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Everyone can be rich, because it's a positive sum game. You having a computer doesn't take it from someone else. Every person on the planet can have one. It's
by throwkeep 5y ago
Everyone can be rich, because it's a positive sum game. You having a computer doesn't take it from someone else. Every person on the planet can have one.
It's not a fixed pie. We are growing the pie. Most people in "developed" countries are rich from a historical perspective. We have shelter, running water, cheap and plentiful food (so much that we waste over 30%), electricity, microwaves, refrigerators, pocket computers and so on. There's no reason this can't come to the entire world and continue to improve for all.
- staticman2 5y agoSure, if you define the word rich as "owns more than a naked caveman" then everyone is rich in the world I suppose. But you are just playing words games.
- chii 5y agobut if you define rich as "having more than your fellow human beings", then you cannot ever have everyone be rich. But that definition is not what most people would use.
- staticman2 5y agoI'd maybe define a rich person as "someone who is capable of working but does not need to labor ever again in order to have a comfortable amount of food, water, shelter, and medical care." Everyone probably cannot be rich like this unless we invent some sort of frighteningly advanced automation to take care of our basic needs.
- kopochameleon 5y ago> unless [the exact scenario Naval is talking about] Good example of "all or nothing thinking" here. "Toiling every day on the backs of humans for our every need" OR "Frighteningly advanced automation" — reality is higher fidelity than that. We're already SO far towards the latter scenario (washing our clothes magically with the press of a button), painting it as a dichotomy only serves to highlight how out of touch with reality the immutable scarcity worldview is.
- des1nderlase 5y agoOr is it? Being rich is a moving target. The same as being successful.
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y agoAllocation of land is indeed a fixed pie. Say being rich is everyone having an 1-acre SFH lot with a view of the ocean. No matter what sort of monetary system we place, there is hard limit to the number of lots that could exist. Some people will have to live further inland. No amount of toasters will change the fact that some people will have to live inland.
- musicale 5y ago> No amount of toasters will change the fact that some people will have to live inland. That's why we have global warming.